Introducing C2-46000

Main page▹Product Overview▹Astronomical cameras▹News	24.4.2025 \|

The G2-8300 cameras become overwhelmingly popular among astro-photographers at the time (and they are still used to capture great images) from two reasons. First, the 4/3" sensor size utilized the 2" telescope adapter standard, for which the G2 was designed, to its maximum. Even slightly larger sensor area would cause severe vignetting from focusers, correctors, filters etc. And second, small pixels and high resolution well suited the short focal length of many small telescopes used by majority of amateurs. Now the C2-46000 is ready to follow in the same steps, just with all great features the rolling-shutter CMOS sensor technology brought to astronomical imaging.

The C2-46000 also employs the 4/3 standard sensor and the imaging area is very similar to the famous G2-8300 (19.3 mm × 13.1 mm vs. 18.1 mm × 13.7 mm), only the CMOS based C2-46000 offers much greater number (46 M vs. 8 M) of much smaller pixels (2.315 μm vs. 5.4 μm). But the C2-46000 can be binned 2 × 2 to get the comparable number of similarly sized pixels (approx. 12 M). Thanks to the great download speed of the CMOS sensor and the C2-46000 ability to 2 × 2 bin pixels in camera hardware, the download speed is still much faster compared to its CCD predecessor (0.2 s vs. 5 s). The binning brings one more advantage — while the C2-46000 operates with 12-bit digitization at full resolution, the 2 × 2 binned images offer 14-bit dynamic range.

The rolling-shutter nature of the IMX492 sensor, used in the C2-46000, delivers a perfectly even and uniform field of view, without any traces of amplifier glow, that the global-shutter CMOS sensors often suffer from.

Otherwise, the C2-46000 shares all the features of the C2 camera series, like the efficient and regulated sensor cooling, mechanical shutter for automatic dark and bias frames, compatibility with a wide range of internal and external filter wheels, OAG adapters, Canon EOS and Nikon lens bayonet adapters etc. So, the C2-46000 easily slips into an existing imaging setup like any other C2 camera.

The image above is the first light image, taken with the C2-46000 camera prototype on 400 mm, f/4 Newtonian telescope. Even the full-size image, available on click on the image thumbnail, is actually scaled down from full resolution. So, we cropped a 1024 × 768 sub-frame from the original image and included it below to demonstrate the excellent resolution of the C2-46000's 46-megapixel sensor.

The C2-46000 is also an excellent camera for deep sky imaging. We haven't had enough time to get a full color image yet, but this white light image of NGC4565 gives an indication of its capabilities.

Images above were captured by Martin Myslivec.

To get more details about the new C2-46000, visit the C2 camera product page.